I believe that what you're seeing there is what has become a very sad story on many levels:
First, during one of the heavy rains last May, this family lost a large chunk of its real estate, including a portion of its patio/pool area. Much of the house structure is also threatened.
Next, a number of folks seemed to loudly celebrate this fact as a "serves you right" example of what happens when a person insists on building too close to the water. Even though they are correct that this should be a cautionary tale, and the original builder did likely seek and obtain variances to build closer to the water than the default rule allows, I still feel badly for anyone who is in danger of losing their home. I feel even more badly if the person who purchased the home is not the original builder. This should be approached from an educational standpoint, not gloating.
Finally, if I'm correct (and I may not be), this particular property owner has sought to extend his property into the Severn to help protect it from further erosion. While I understand the desperation that any of us might go through when trying to save our home, hopefully cooler heads will prevail at the state/county level. Given the amount of equipment at the base of the cliff, however, I fear that our river has once again been sold out to the few.
People cannot be permitted to usurp a portion of the public's waterways for their own personal benefit, especially when the problem occurred because they built/purchased a home that was placed in a risky area to begin with. Nobody forced them to take that risk, and although our governments appear to be in the risk-softening business lately, I hope that they stop using tax dollars to guarantee property investments, especially when the result takes away and diminishes a public resource like the Severn. To be fair, many people, through placing riprap below the mean-high-water-mark, already do this, so this homeowner is no worse than many others. My hope is that the new mandatory living shoreline law will greatly reduce this practice.
P.S.: I should add that another possibility exists: The homeowner may be in the process of implimenting a living shoreline plan to control erosion, which would probably be the most effective thing that he could do. I have not heard anything about this, so I have my doubts, but I'll try to see what I can learn. Maybe JPW can chime in if his multiple eyes and ears have learned anything about this.
P.P.S.: I should also add that I think that we've only begun to scratch the surface on what will become a huge problem of homes in danger of sliding into the Severn. At least a half-dozen homes became in serious danger as a result of the heavy rains this May. Most of those are obvious from tarps/construction equipment. What is not obvious are the many more whose owners are faced with the daunting task of adding very deep concrete footers to their foundation to stop their home's migragtion down a steep sloap. My brother told me that this is happening to some homes in his community of Epping Forest, often at the cost of $100k or more and often without any guaruntee from the engineer that it will ultimately work.
As all of us know, the Severn is loaded with homes perched precariously at a cliff's edge or right on very steep sloaps. Many of those were once cottages or modest homes. Especially over the past decade, however, many (perhaps most) of these have expanded significantly, often doubling, tripling or more in size. Similarly huge homes have been built on steep "infill" lots. I'm not an engineer, but considering the greatly increased weight and likely increased septic field saturation for these homes, I believe that the problems for homes on the Severn's edge have just begun. This has huge implications for our river, since I expect a continuing fight over the extent to which these homeowners can alter the shoreline to protect their property.
by a few zeros.
